What are some things which never made sense in some settings?

It's like in Skyrim where gigantic immortal dragons are fapping about and people are still like, "We can deal with the dragons no problem when the Stormcloaks/Imperials are gone"

>>There's a very clear and present danger to the world
>>Everyone, and I mean everyone, just wants to fuck around with petty bullshit

Climate change will literally kill industrial civilization and reduce humanity to a feudal at best existence, and nobody does fuck all about it in favor of muh god muh politics shit

Yeah, but climate change is nebulous and hard to point to something and say "this, this right here is visible evidence that Joe schmoe can understand" trollocks and mydraal roaming the realms of men and battles with so much power that they light up the sky are a bit more tangible. I'm not saying that humanity won't inevitably kill itself, I guess I'm just hoping that are death will be subtle and creeping

There's only so many people you can put inside of a castle and food stocks are limited. There were many times in history when peasants were left to their own fate. Besides, to starve a castle you need to make a siege. If you just kill the peasants and leave, the people in the castle will simply trade for food, or ask for help to any friendly lord close by.

And inflating the army with peasants MAY have the advantage of intimidating the enemy, but it depends on the situation.

Not to mention most sieges were won by starvation, not battle. It only takes a few men (comparatively) to hold a castle against a much greater force, so you don't need freeloaders. Most of the time, a good number of actual armed soldiers were sent away in the face of a coming siege when they didn't need that many and didn't want extra mouths to feed, which in turn actually HURTS their chances of holding the castle.

Fuckin plebs

>Climate change will literally kill industrial civilization
Nice

>Yeah, but climate change is nebulous and hard to point to something and say "this, this right here is visible evidence that Joe schmoe can understand"
I prefer this link
nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/07/science/earth/antarctic-crack.html

You cant hide a entire country population inside castles.

>Honestly I didn't mind Ned, Sansa, even goddamn Jaime was kind of okay too, but so many are really hard to like. Like fuck, do we really need a POV of fucking Cersei screwing everything up from her eyes?

I enjoyed that.

Its like when you hate someone at start but suddenly you can see how dumb she is and starts paying attention to her just for fun.

Depending on the location, they do exactly that or have enormous walls surrounding cities. King's Landing both has food shortages & big walls on the outside of the town. They want less mouths to feed & anyone who can get pass the walls already has the city anyway. Winterfell actually has people flock to it & its nearby towns every winter.

>You cant hide a entire country population inside castles.
I mean of course not, but to let none of the peasants in is just retarded. Even if you can't take them all, it'd be better to have some in the city. There was a whole method of warfare revolving around dicking around with the peasants- chevauchee.

>why didn't they open up the winter food reserves? Yes you need the winter food reserves for winter, but you can't use the reserves if you're not alive at all.
Ask the drunken whore queen. She's too busy keeping herself & her top brass fed.

Within ASOIAF, seasons last long enough that people tend to fatten up in the summer & gather to store for winter during the autumn. Storing during the summer is more likely to cause rotten food due to length of the seasons & heat. They also used to have a fat fuck of a king feasting every milisecond.

GRRM actually is right here. Why would the Lord or a castle let useless mouths in during a siege?

Jamie chapters are the GOAT chapters you fucking plebs

>Why would the Lord or a castle let useless mouths in during a siege?
Because Westeros is a Agrarian economy, and this is the main income for most of the Lords of Westeros. So trying to keep as many peasants alive is crucial to your income.

Tywin did indeed attack the smallfolk during & after his attacks on Riverrun. It was after Robb assblasted him by capturing Jamie too & Tywin was pinned down. If anything, Robb captured significant amounts of Lannister resources like goldmines & it's explicitly mentioned that Tywin's actions practically gleaned the Riverlands clean, feeding his army what he doesn't burn. During those circumstances, Robb had Tywin on the ropes & Edmure needed better fed trained soldiers than he needed peasants who aren't farming.

on top of the peasant murder, it frequently seems like their battles swing far, far more than historical battles.

at least per the wiki, almost every battle has these giant swings of "near complete destruction of the army" for the losing side. And sometimes these armies are literally hundreds of thousands of people.

Let's compare this to, say, the battle of Crecy, which was a huge huge deal during the hundred years war, which had a total combatant count of about 45000 between both sides
But the side which got their shit WRECKED, where this was a humiliating defeat that rewrote history?
2000 casualties. Not even a tenth of their force.
war is simply not sustainable on the scales ASOIAF works on.

Of course it isn't, they made this abundantly clear in the books. King's Landing's internal strife came from somewhere. All their food was either feeding royalty or the army. Remember the riot & everyone shouting for Bread?

>Winterfell actually has people flock to it & its nearby towns every winter.
Meanwhile everyone was bitching at Edmure for letting the peasants into Riverrun when Gregor "Rape your Daughter" Clegane was running around. I think the Starks are an exception to the whole, "fuck the peasants" mentality.

>Storing during the summer is more likely to cause rotten food due to length of the seasons & heat.
Wasn't it autumn at that point in the books though?

Edmure allowed the peasants in not just during Robb's counterattacks, but when Jaime started moving in on Riverrun. Which was widely considered a bad move, when in reality the fact that Lannisters are very well known for murderfucking citizens (The Mountain, Sack of Kings Landing) means it's a better idea to keep them in than to leave them at their mercy.

I don't recall where I've read it, but I think it was about 9 peasants per 1 townsperson in medieval times, which is a pretty important fucking incentive to want to keep those peasants alive.

>battle of Crecy,
It was a Big deal because the french lost to a army half its size and so many knights were captured or killed. Such a Battle like that would be a big deal.

For me it's Valerian steel thats the real bullshit, It literally breaks physics since apparently it never goes dull. If its magic then that doesn't make much sense either since GOT magic seems to have sacrifice as a requirement and what are you sacrificing that gives you swords that stay sharp forever? Also fighting with Valerian steel would probably be a real pain since it probably doesn't absorb shock well due to it magically unbreakableness

>requirement and what are you sacrificing that gives you swords that stay sharp forever
Its Implied its human Sacrifice

>Meanwhile everyone was bitching at Edmure for letting the peasants into Riverrun when Gregor "Rape your Daughter" Clegane was running around.
This is a problem? The way both sides played wasn't the more long term, kill peasants so they sue for peace before they starve game. It's the siege their castles or capture political figures until you've got enough hostages game. They didn't want to starve their enemies to death because there's all sorts of other threats like Danny & Young Griff & others coming along & they wanted to pick them back up, abit on a tight leash, & deal with the threats ahead. Not only that but each side had multiple enemies, they couldn't play any long term games without fear.

Look all i want is for a offhanded comment saying "oh there is a tiny chip on this one" just too show that they dont stay sharp forever because if they do then how many people do you need to sacrifice to get permanent immunity too physics

>if they do then how many people do you need to sacrifice to get permanent immunity too physics
Dozen if the tyrion chapter is to be realible.

>autumn
It was summer when it started & the fatass Robert was too busy feasting. As many have mentioned, many sides were funneling food to their, remarkably large for medieval times, armies & all sides wanted to win as soon as possible without damaging their enemies too hard.

>What are some things which never made sense in some settings?
Most fantasy settings have fucking no sensible scale, due to the writers being brainless. ASOIAF being an excellent case in point, where his not!British Isles are the size of an entire continent yet still a single kingdom ruled by one king.

He should have just made targaryens Emperors with Autonomous Vassals once the Dragons were Killed off

It's more similar to an empire with many smaller kingdoms than a single large one in practice. They have common currency, langauge & more but each side is damn different culture wise. Just rename the King on the Iron Throne the Emperor & each Lord Paramount a King & it'd be enough.

How is a dozen people equal too eternal sharpness

>stark raving mad

Edmure nearly lost Riverrun anyway. Could he have predicted Robb coming to save the day? It's like a life or limb decision. He chose the option which risked everyone dying but had a chance of everyone living. The others thought it was a bad move & he should have ensured their survival before smallfolk.

but not during a siege, the peasants can run away, someone has to hold the castle.

And it was Robb that lost the war due to his naivety. Blaming Edmure for trying to do the right thing is rather moot

Even today we have lots of people who, despite modern scientific evidences, can't into understanding climate change. Wasn't there even a US-Senator who went to Washington with a snowball as "proof" that climate change doesn't exist?
What makes you think Joe Peasant from the not!middleages or kings that were batshit insane, lazy, fat whorefuckers or batshit insane again, would care about this? Especially if "the north" is about a month of travelling away?

Robb lost because he didn't strap Edmure to a chair & shut him up. Edmure attacking Tywin when Robb was away was a bad move. Robb told him to protect Riverrun & to await orders. He attacked & foiled Robb's plan. Not even Theon taking Winterfell was this bad.

>someone has to hold the castle.
Unless that someone is either Stannis or Ser Cortnay.

Cortnay was actually pretty damn smart. He knew that though Stannis would conquer Storm's End given time, Stannis had no time & disloyal men. It wasn't about who can outlast who, it's who actually has the option to outlast anyone.

Those things make sense, though. You're never going to get all of your population, or even a significant fraction of it, inside a castle.

No, the thing that doesn't make sense about ASoIaF is the ecology. The variable seasons, with each season usually lasting 1 to 4 years and a cycle therefore lasting anywhete from 4 to 16 years, would just make a lot of species no longer viable. Nothing that hibernates would be able to survive, and I don't think trees or perennial plants could either. I'm pretty sure there would be other horrific consequences as well, like massive desertification during long summers and civilization-ending storms between the hot and cold areas when the planet decides to be tidally locked for four years.

You are assuming that slaughtering the smallfolk is how war is normally done. It isn't.

You go and kick over the noble and declare yourself the new guy in charge and just sort of assume control of their peasants. What are they going to do about it? Serving one lord isn't that much different from serving another to them, and the lords are the ones with the armies.

The only reason the smallfolk get it so bad during the books is because the war gets so fucked. Too many sides fighting too many sides, tot he point that the normal rules of war have broken down and everyone is scrambling for any advantage they can get no matter how small. Even then, the only one who was really going out of his way to burn villages and kill fucking everyone was Gregor Clegane, who the Lannisters had to DENY was doing any such thing and certainly wasn't doing it under any orders, because the shit he was doing was extremely bad publicity.

In a 'normal' war, the peasants are under much less threat and bringing them all into your castle dramatically reduces the amount of time you can hold out during a siege, which sort of defeats the point of preparing fro siege in the first place.

Your problem is that you are thinking of these battles in wargame terms, where the goal is to kill 100% of your enemies dudes. In actuality, most medieval battles considering killing 1/5th of the enemy force to be a complete and total rout that would destroy their line and cost them the field. If you killed 1/3rd of their fighting force, there was no second battle. You had already captured or killed everyone who mattered and the war was over aside from cleaning up small and scattered bands of troublemakers.

Robb and Blackfish forget to communicate their plans to Edmure. Edmure saw what in his mind and anyone in his situation a good battle to be won for his factions.

Tywin gets the message of “Stannis at the gates PLS HELP” just in perfect time to not fall into Robb’s trap and arrive at the most dramatic moment to save KL is nothing more than Deus Ex machina.

Except Gregor WAS killing the small folk. You have to get them away from him. And the Lannister got a huge reputation for being civilian murderers- do you think sacking Kings Landing has been forgotten?

There are other castles and keeps. They don't have to all go to Riverrun.

good point but I'd like to add that besides Clegane, there were a few roving bands of Sellswords, deserters and straight up bandits causing most of the mayham, the Lannister army was not doing a genocidal operation in the Riverlands.

You have to consider that everyone in westeros is quite close culturally, they have their differences, but they all speak the same language.

Read Codex Alera. A magocracy done well.

>is nothing more than Deus Ex machina.

To be fair, the biggest contributing factor in any war has always been luck. There is no strategic advantage, no matter how great, that cannot be utterly wasted because of a bad luck of the draw.

In a siege, the defenders want as few people in the castle as possible. Castles were known to throw out all non-essential staff if they were expecting a siege. They certainly weren't letting in more mouths to feed.

One thing GRRM realized was that Robb was winning. Losing Jamie? That was laughable compared to the amount of Lannister land he's taken. Had he had to do something so it won't end with Robb winning.

Stannis got the shortest end of the stick.

though that was also due to communication, if he had cooperated with Robb, if Stannis had moved north to face Tywin in straight up battle, who knows what would have happened.

Attaking a city while the enemies main force is not accounted for is inviting catastrophe.

Wizards and clerics don't rule Toril or Oerth for the exact same reasons our world leaders aren't all soldiers or engineers, and the reasons why your boss at work isn't the person who gets the most work done. Political power isn't about doing shit yourself; it's about getting others to do shit for you. Even the most effective person on the individual scale can't compete with someone who can motivate and organize people rather than just kill or threaten them. See Varys' speech about where power resides.

Oddly enough, a show airing now offers the perfect example of why the world isn't a mageocracy, and in fact the use of magic is in decline and actually seen as kind of useless.

In Little Witch Academia, magic can do all kinds of shit. It can create portals between distant places using dedicated archways, you can use it to fly or polymorph or do all sorts of other fantastical stuff.

But the simple fact of the matter is that most places don't HAVE any magic to use. The school has a giant fucking philosophers stone as a magical antenna, one that they can't replace, to suck up magic and store it as a massive battery, and its only as powerful as it is because its been storing up magic for literally hundreds of years. Get a few miles away from that and all of your spells have to make do with whatever charge your wand has stored up. Mages get one or two spells before they have to return to the stone to draw power again and recharge their wand. Even magic items like brooms are not infinite, you have an hour or two tops before you run out of juice.

And we don't know how many battery stones exist in the world, but its a pretty low number. The magic school didn't even make theirs, they had to convince a motherfucking dragon to make it for them.

So for all the shit magic can do, its limited to only be relevant in a very small area for lack of infrastructure. Its like if computers only worked in roughly three small towns in the whole world, and physically couldn't function anywhere else. No one would consider them all that great. You can't rule the world with that power, because you can't use it in any kind of large scale.

It was one of Stannis' men who said not to bring Melisandre because it'd be her win, not his army's win. Had she came along, who knows.

If Eddard saw into the future, he might as well continued declaring for Stannis if he knew he'd be executed anyway. In that circumstance Robb & Stannis would steamroll the Lannisters. The Lannisters couldn't handle Robb without help, they'd be fucked.

"I killed [Ned] because everybody thinks he’s the hero ... sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it. The next predictable thing [someone] is going to rise up and avenge his [death] ... So immediately [killing [Robb]] became the next thing I had to do."
George R.R Martin

What did he mean by this?

Because Valarian Steel is a remain of a age of Stronger Magic.
Which is why its so potent.
Just like Dragonglass, or any of the magic materials that is still around.

Its entirely reasonable, it just looks out of place, just like everything non grimderp do in Rapetown Rape.

Thats for Wizards.
Clerics is a entirely different breed.
Why isn't The Church of the Norse Pantheon completely ruling the continent?
Once the Pantheon goes DEUS VULT, its literally taken over society.

Thats even more true in Grimderp DND, because all it takes is for some faggot to reach level 12-16, and he can literally GATE in higher divinity to supplement the fact he has no second in command.

Why the fuck does anyone trust the Dornish after they kill Daron under a peace banner, amputated hundreds of men, and say they'll give Baelor his family member back only to dangle him in a cage over vipers?

The main gimmick of Martin is to invert the classical fairy tale trope.
> The prince is an asshole.
> The knights are assholes.
> the usurper is actually a nice guy.
> the princess escape (arya).
> the other princess is detained by the prince.
> the dragon is detained.
> After the (red) wedding, they didn't lived happy and did not have any child
> knight servant are traitors
> the only "true knight" played straight is a woman
> the warlord of the barbarian is actually pretty nice
>and so on

The funny thing is that he also inverts things again after.
>Backstabbers kill honorable people
>Backstabbers then fuck themselves with infighting
>Honorable people's followers loyally rebuild & fight in their name
>Backstabbers are still fucking each other dead as this happens

> the only "true knight" played straight is a woman

There's a lot of true knights around in the books. Ser Barristan, Beric Dondarrion, many of Stannis' bodyguards, Ser Brynden Tully, just to name a few.

Granted. But Barristan is old, so does the Blackfish, Dondarrion is an outlaw, Stannis bodyguard, I've got the feeling they're lawful alright, but they've throw their compassion trough the highest window of Dragonstone...

>Stannis bodyguard, I've got the feeling they're lawful alright, but they've throw their compassion trough the highest window of Dragonstone...
When your lord is Stannis the Mannis, and his enemies are sociopathic, delusional, and manipulative, you don't need compassion

The only reason Climate Change isn't accepted on a wide scale in the US right now is because the Coal industry leveraged propaganda early on to throw doubt on it.

It's Magic you fucking retard. Of course it breaks the laws of physics.

Or because it was first called Global Warming.

Because they don't slaughter all the peasant, the soldiers just have their fun with them. Everybody knows they would starve without peasants, but it's not like there is a shortage of them. Nobody's going to miss a hundred of 'em, or ten thousand for that matter. Somehow worked out in real history too, didn't it?

>Somehow worked out in real history too, didn't it?
When the peasantry was almost gone. The Nobles had to bend over backwards to try and get as many on their land. and in our world they got certain rights now seen before.

George Told Us westeros is a Sparse Continent, and that KL is the Most Heavily populated City. Reducing a Population already thin is Idiotic

>trollocks and mydraal roaming the realms of men and battles with so much power that they light up the sky are a bit more tangible.
Outside the borderlands, most people think Trollocs and the like are a myth, and that Darkfriends are just weirdo cults (and a lot of them were until the Forsaken started waking up).

also
The only reason Climate Change isn't accepted on a wide scale in the US right now is because the Coal industry leveraged propaganda early on to throw doubt on it.
Think of the Darkfriends as Coal Industry Lobbies.

But that's the main reason peasants work for the Lord of a castle.
To get protection in case of an attack.

That's not how Feudalism works

>"B-but muh tax system"

Used once for a Plot Gimmick and then never talked about again.

Protection in the sense that the lands will eventually be reconquered

The lord does not "owe" his peasants anything. Peasants owe their lord their allegiance.

Cortnay actually makes no fucking sense to me.
Renly was dead, he owed his fealty to Stannis even if we ignore the king part because he fucking owned the Stormlands now, and he literally promises he'll join anyone who isn't Stannis if they help break the siege... because the people who joined Stannis changed their king and that's disloyal.

I've always wondered why WH40k doesn't have more megastructures. We've got the world engine, the planet killer, and all the other giant spaceships, but I don't think I've heard of a ringworld or other big dumb object.

If the DAOT humans can crank out castigator titans, use baneblades as scouting tanks, and make a battleship with a magic main gun that can warp targets backwards in time just so it doesn't have to shoot twice, why didn't they build ringworlds, dyson spheres, artificial planets, and other giant space constructions?

That isn't even mentioning the Necrons or Eldar.

Does it not just fit the theme?

Something about Edric. He feared Stannis might Kill Edric

He was right too. Mel would have roasted that boy

Edric and Shireen should be betrothal

A fair suggestion, however not one that makes any fucking sense given his suggestion of settling this with trial by combat.

The Shireen thing made me just plain stop watch the show.
I was annoyed with how they didn't seem to get the Stannis character at all up to that point, but the killing off of Shireen for shock value combined with the Dorne act just cemented it.

What's the point?

Why would you present a large mostly stationary target to your enemies when you have ships that can fuck up time itself? Probably there were some such structures built basically on a dare and most of them got destroyed.

Eldar also have Commoragh and Webway which make most ringworlds look pitiful. Unless we go into Culture scale things where whole system mass was combined into a single habitat around a star.

they should have just killed everyone but the martells in the dorne act.

God how I fucking the people who make the Game of Thrones. They make Stannis evil for shitty fucking reason.

Why did Ogryns adapt to high gravity worlds by becoming even heavier than normal? Wouldn't it make sense for them to have become like birds- lightweight yet strong so as to resist the pull of gravity?

They have ships are the size of continents, saying that making anything larger is making a big target is fucking dumb as fuck.
I mean FFS they build statues the size of mountains and put them on top of these giant ships for decoration purposes.

>magic steel does not follow the laws of physic
you are aware that ASOIAF is fantasy, are you, dipshit?

It goes both ways. The Lord has to keep them and the land secure, they work the land.

There are sorts of super structures. They just get no spotlight.

And he's obviously working on it if he's holed up in his castle? Peasants should know their place and show some gratitude.

Tywin please stop.

Continent ? That's a small target. Things like a Morthanveld nestworld are a big target. It transforms all the matter in the star system into a basket like weave around a star and is capable of housing hundreds-thousands of billions of people.

They were just in it for the shock value. After the red wedding it feels like they lost interest and the show has gotten progressively worse and made less sense since season 4.

Why did they ever hate Stannis.
He's the Only one not being a fucking idiot

Well he was being a fucking idiot, but in that special stannis way we all love.

Because they invested all their love in Daenerys and Tyrion.

Seriously, they don't understand moral ambiguity at all. They made the characters they like more lovable and clean and the characters they didn't retard evil.